The Queensland Greens have announced an ambitious plan to overhaul Queensland’s planning system, trialing citizen juries and binding community votes to draft neighbourhood plans, making height limits and greenspace provisions non-negotiable and binding, and rolling back Labor’s provision that allows developers to choose their own assessors.
Under the trial, neighbourhood plans would be drafted by a panel of residents randomly selected from the community with assistance from architects and town planners.
The Greens have also proposed to introduce a new developer tax and remove the cap on infrastructure charges, to ensure councils can force property developers to make a fair contribution to local parks, public transport and other infrastructure.
Michael Berkman Greens MP for Maiwar:
“Queensland’s planning laws are stacked in favour of property developers because Labor wrote the Planning Act in the same year they took over $270,000 in donations from developers.
“Property developers have spent years trampling over local communities without any regard for residents, and it’s put massive pressure on our public infrastructure including roads, schools and hospitals.
“The Greens will give residents real power over development in their local neighbourhoods, ensure height limits and greenspace provisions are actually adhered to and make developers pay their fair share to fund crucial public infrastructure.
“Our groundbreaking trial of citizen juries and direct resident votes on neighbourhood plans would finally give people real power over the way their suburbs are built and developed.
“Development is important, but it needs to be done sustainably, where residents get a real say and certainty, and developers contribute to crucial public infrastructure.”
- Launch a groundbreaking trial of deliberative democracy for local planning, where citizen juries draft neighbourhood plans and local residents vote on the final plans
- Tighten neighbourhood plans to end special deals for developers, with strict and binding height limits, no exemptions to boundary setbacks, and binding minimum requirements for trees and green space
- Overhaul the Planning Act to make sure all developments over eight storeys are “Impact Assessable”, strengthen community objection rights, close loopholes in the Planning Act, restrict construction noise and ban development in flood-prone areas
- Introduce a 75% tax on the value gains property developers make from favourable land rezonings to raise $7.8 billion over four years
- Remove the $20,000 cap on developer infrastructure charges to give councils the flexibility to charge developers according to the cost of delivering crucial infrastructure